Obama takes a risk with support for Japan

Hugh White

Just three years ago, in March 2011, Julia Gillard told the US Congress that ''America can do anything''. At that very moment her host in Washington, Barack Obama, was asking himself what exactly America could and should do to help oust Muammar Gaddafi and prevent chaos in Libya. His answer was ''not much''. He decided to ''lead from behind''.

Since then there have been many more tests of America’s capacity to impose order around the world, and all have failed. It has not done anything effective to prevent Egypt’s revolution turning toxic, to save Syria from civil war, to force North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons, to stop Iran enriching uranium, or to halt Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine. Nor has it been able to deter China from increasingly assertive conduct in territorial disputes with its neighbours in the South China Sea and East China Sea.

The only palpable success Obama can show to set against these disappointments is the death of Osama bin Laden. But killing one man - even that man - is hardly a decisive display of the power of the world’s strongest state.

It is easy to blame the President himself for all this, and many people do. They see him as too timid and cerebral to make a statesman, lacking the passion and courage to wield American power effectively. These criticisms miss the mark. Obama has made mistakes, such as his unwise decision to set a ''red line'' over the use of chemical weapons in Syria from which he fumblingly retreated when the line was crossed.

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But Obama’s decisions not to intervene more directly in successive crises around the world show one vital characteristic of real statecraft. They show that he understands the limits of America’s power. They show that he knows that Gillard is wrong - that there is a lot that America cannot do.

Those who criticise Obama for weakness in facing all these crises need to say exactly what they think he could have done. In particular, they need to explain what real, practical options there are to use America’s military power when, as in all the examples listed above, diplomacy is not working. Because even a quick glance shows that a military intervention in any of them would carry massive costs, huge risks, and scant chance of success.

But those who urge decisive US intervention in problems around the world seldom pause to ask what exactly they think US forces should do, what kind of forces would be needed, what kind of opponents they would need to defeat, how long it would last and what it would cost.

There is a reason for this. Since the Cold War ended 25 years ago, an entire generation of politicians, policymakers and commentators - including Gillard - have been busy telling one another that American power, and especially its military power, is limitless. It became, and remains, accepted as a kind of axiom that America can easily win any war against anyone, anywhere. From this its follows that only a lack of will could hold America back.

This is quite wrong. America’s forces are indeed the most powerful in the world by a big margin, with an unparalleled capacity to project and sustain power anywhere in the world. But they are not necessarily strong enough to overmatch local forces fighting close to home, nor are they necessarily well-suited to the tasks they might be called upon to perform.

And this would be true even without recent big cuts to the US Defence budget and the size of its forces. Even with twice as many army divisions as it has today, America would have no credible military options to fight Putin in Ukraine or bring order to Syria.

It is remarkable that the illusion of US military omnipotence should ever have flourished among people with real responsibilities to make or influence strategic decisions in America or anywhere else. It is even more remarkable that it should have survived the successive failures that the illusion had already given rise to in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is therefore to Obama’s credit that he has been willing to resist the prevailing orthodoxy, and saved America from the kinds of mistakes made by his hapless predecessor, George W. Bush, when he committed America to quixotic campaigns that it could not win.

But it is also therefore all the more striking, and all the more worrying, that Obama should now have so boldly pledged America to a military commitment more momentous than anything it has undertaken since the end of the Cold War.

Two weeks ago in Tokyo he solemnly promised to support Japan militarily in any fight with China over the disputed Senkaku Islands. This is a promise that Obama had very clearly avoided making for more than 18 months since tension over these islands flared. His reticence came at a big cost, eroding Japan’s confidence in the US-Japan alliance and undermined the credibility of Obama’s whole Pivot to Asia.

It seemed that until his trip Obama accepted that cost because he realised just how dangerous it would be to go to war with China - a war that America could not win and could not control, against a very determined adversary with nuclear weapons.

But now Obama has committed himself and his country to go to war with China anyway if there are clashes with Japan over the Senkakus, which is hardly a remote possibility. So either Obama has now changed his mind and believes that he could win a war over the Senkakus, or he is bluffing in the hope that China will back off. Either way he’s made a big mistake.

Hugh White is an Age columnist and professor of strategic studies at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, ANU.

15 comments so far

I'm wondering when a serving PM, maybe abbot, is going to find out that Indonesia is more important to US interests than Australia is... We already know that Japan is more important to them, just like last time...

Commenter

tok3z

Date and time

May 13, 2014, 3:23AM

More warnings from the oracle, come on Hugh, months ago you were promising China was about to teach Australia a painful lesson, well so far nothing has happened.

Unfortunately fact isn't quite as entertaining as fiction.

Commenter

SteveH.

Date and time

May 13, 2014, 7:22AM

How does the author view China's claims to the territorial waters of it's neighbors. When you look at the map of their claims, they want everything from everyone. Not a single concession to any country. I think China (and Russia) know the American public is tired of getting involved in regional political issues and they are both going to try and seize territory. It's already happening in Ukraine. Now it's coming to our neighbourhood. China will own half of Australia soon, so we're irrelevant anyway.

Commenter

mj

Date and time

May 13, 2014, 7:59AM

They probably also suspect that support for Japan comes with the same resolve as Syria's red line did.

Commenter

Archie

Location

China

Date and time

May 13, 2014, 4:46PM

Yawn. Another pro-Beijing piece from Professor White.

Don't the Chinese have some obligation to act with restraint here, instead of throwing their weight around with Japan, Vietnam, Phiippines etc?

It is this pattern of behaviour that the US wants to send a clear signal to prevent, and a lot of people in the region welcome that. Except for North Korea (and perhaps Professor White), the Chinese don't have many diplomatic friends in the region.

Commenter

mike88

Date and time

May 13, 2014, 8:34AM

Perhaps Mike88 hasn't read Professor White's piece closely. At no time was he justifying the actions of the Chinese Government. Instead, questioned the wisdom of the US making policies without the wherewithal to deliver on them.

As Mark at 9:19am pointed out, the uninhabitable islands in question, to the extent that there is any justification for being "owned" by any country, "belong" to China. Therefore, they should have been returned at the end of World War II. The reason they were not is, simply, anti-communism - since the Chinese Revolution of 1949, US foreign policy has been to bar China's access to the Pacific Ocean. Alliances with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines were the main strategy, but keeping the island chains between Taiwan and Japan and between Taiwan and the Philippines out of Beijing's control was a secondary tactic. Perhaps General Macarthur had greater faith in Japan's ability (under US occupation) to keep the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands out of Red China's hands than in the ramshackle dictatorship of Chiang Kai-Shek in Taiwan.

What is my position? I oppose the military manouvres of the US and of all States in the region - including China. Dynamite the Diaoyu/Senkakus, the Spratly Islands, the Liancourt Rocks (a Japan/South Korea argument!) and all the others in dispute. Bring them down to below sea level so there is nothing to fight about. Then make the entire South China Sea and East China Sea, outside the 19 km territorial limit of each country, a zone of economic co-operation for all States bordering those waters, along the lines of the Australia-East Timor zone. Let it be shared pro rata by population, with right of innocent passage for all vessels. That should fix things.

Commenter

Greg Platt

Location

Brunswick

Date and time

May 13, 2014, 8:26PM

Let's look at the historical background. The disputed island was part of the Taiwan Province during the last Qing Dynasty which eventually was overthrown in 1911 and China entered a long period of civil wars and colonization by European powers. At that time Japan invaded China and took Manchuria and Taiwan. Taiwan became a Japanese colony for over 50 years.

After the Second World War, Japan returned Taiwan but kept the disputed island. Unfortunately the US for strange reason allowed Japan to do so, hence the dispute ever since.

China was too busy with its own turmoil until recently, so obviously it wants the island back.

This bit of history has been etched into the memory of generations of Chinese people around the world. The US should take note of this.

Commenter

Mark

Location

Melbourne

Date and time

May 13, 2014, 9:19AM

Yes Mark a careful study of the fairly recent history of the last 170 years reveals a far weaker China being mercilessly exploited territorially and economically by Britain, Japan, Russia and Germany. Currently we have a powerful China starting to exert itself in a relatively conservative fashion in its own domain over disputed islands. Let's not rush too quickly to judgement of China.

Commenter

Huanghe

Date and time

May 13, 2014, 9:08PM

If anyone recalls, Barry's US regime went all across Asia once they were re-elected by the US people to rekindle their relationships with governments there. Even going out of their way to slip millions of dollars in the back pockets of officials in the Burmese government (A government well renowned for its human rights abuses, imprisonment and torture of political opponents.)

Since then they have gone to supporting terrorists in Syria through third party agents such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey and are now trying to achieve the same thing in Ukraine. All of this boils down to US, Russian and Chinese interests in each region.

I'm sick and tired of the Monopoly they have over these places; playing chess with peoples lives in the best interests off their regimes because they are all too big to go to war with one another. Some might view this as an anti-US post, but we adhere to their words 24/7, so I'm calling them out on their BS. End rant.

Commenter

Luke

Location

Melbourne

Date and time

May 13, 2014, 1:08PM

How come Obama don't give the Japanese back islands like Okinawa, which they have lorded over for nigh on 70 years ?. The people on Okinawa don't want them anymore, yet they linger on, with their war games. By the way Obama, its all very well taking on easy pesy nations like Iraq and Afghanistan, in wars, with no Navies or airforce, but the Chinese are a very, very different kettle of fish. Only a fool would stir up the Chinese like this, whom have a massive army, Navy and airforce, and the A Bomb too.